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Lot Essay
Courtiers of Heian Japan (794-1185) enjoyed singing poetry to musical accompaniment. The most popular source of poems was the bilingual anthology known as the Wakan roei shu (Japanese and Chinese poems to sing). Compiled in the eleventh century by the preeminent poet and critic Fujiwara no Kinto (966-1041), it contains over eight hundred Chinese poems by Chinese poets, Chinese poems by Japanese courtiers, and Japanese poems (waka). For centuries these short, evocative poems were memorized and sung at court, into lovers' ears, or at moments when spoken words were inadequate to express an emotion.
The practice of writing the poems on shikishi, a nearly square sheet of paper suitable for writing a single verse, began in the Heian period. Shikishi bearing poems written in fine calligraphy were then mounted on folding screens for display. On this screen there are thirty-six poems on each screen. They are arranged in twelve "columns" on each screen, reading each column from top to bottom and beginning with the far right panel.
The first poem on the left screen (no. 404) is a Chinese poem written in Chinese characters:
The mountains remote--clouds bury the tracks of travelers passing through;
The pine trees are cold--wind blows to fragments the dreams of wanderers.
The second poem (no. 409) is Japanese and written in kana script:
Shall I think of you as someone altogether separate from me?
Just like the white clouds on the highest peaks of Mount Katsuragi?
(from J. Thomas Rimer and Jonathan Chaves, eds. and trans., Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing: The Wakan roei shu [New York: Columbia University Press, 1997], pp. 124-26).
As Ann Yonemura of the Freer/Sackler Gallery has written, "for the calligrapher, the text of the Wakan roei shu, which alternates frequently between sequences of Chinese characters and Japanese kana, is particularly challenging, like a musical score that demands a high level of technical skill and virtuosity for performance. The close juxtaposition of poems written in substantial and structurally stable Chinese characters to waka verses written in slender, insubstantial lines of kana demands of the calligraphers a parallel and articulate mastery of both calligraphic modes." (Yonemura, "The Art of Calligraphy and the Wakan roei shu" in Rimer and Chaves, op. cit., p. 263)
Arranged in roughly chronological order the poems are as follows:
Left screen:
panel 1: 404,409,410,415,419,420
2: 423,427,425,428,426,429
3: 433,958*,435,440,438,442
4: 439,447,451,449,452,450
5: 453,460,461,477,478,508
6: 501,528,529,536,537,538
Right screen:
panel 1: 81,85,83,111,88,93
2: 89,94,91,95,96,100
3: 99,101,102,110,103,86
4: 109,113,123,115,124,117
5: 125,129,131,132,137,139
6: 138,140,142,141,143,135
*958 is from the Kokin waka shu (A Collection of Japanese Poems from Ancient and Modern Times)
The practice of writing the poems on shikishi, a nearly square sheet of paper suitable for writing a single verse, began in the Heian period. Shikishi bearing poems written in fine calligraphy were then mounted on folding screens for display. On this screen there are thirty-six poems on each screen. They are arranged in twelve "columns" on each screen, reading each column from top to bottom and beginning with the far right panel.
The first poem on the left screen (no. 404) is a Chinese poem written in Chinese characters:
The mountains remote--clouds bury the tracks of travelers passing through;
The pine trees are cold--wind blows to fragments the dreams of wanderers.
The second poem (no. 409) is Japanese and written in kana script:
Shall I think of you as someone altogether separate from me?
Just like the white clouds on the highest peaks of Mount Katsuragi?
(from J. Thomas Rimer and Jonathan Chaves, eds. and trans., Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing: The Wakan roei shu [New York: Columbia University Press, 1997], pp. 124-26).
As Ann Yonemura of the Freer/Sackler Gallery has written, "for the calligrapher, the text of the Wakan roei shu, which alternates frequently between sequences of Chinese characters and Japanese kana, is particularly challenging, like a musical score that demands a high level of technical skill and virtuosity for performance. The close juxtaposition of poems written in substantial and structurally stable Chinese characters to waka verses written in slender, insubstantial lines of kana demands of the calligraphers a parallel and articulate mastery of both calligraphic modes." (Yonemura, "The Art of Calligraphy and the Wakan roei shu" in Rimer and Chaves, op. cit., p. 263)
Arranged in roughly chronological order the poems are as follows:
Left screen:
panel 1: 404,409,410,415,419,420
2: 423,427,425,428,426,429
3: 433,958*,435,440,438,442
4: 439,447,451,449,452,450
5: 453,460,461,477,478,508
6: 501,528,529,536,537,538
Right screen:
panel 1: 81,85,83,111,88,93
2: 89,94,91,95,96,100
3: 99,101,102,110,103,86
4: 109,113,123,115,124,117
5: 125,129,131,132,137,139
6: 138,140,142,141,143,135
*958 is from the Kokin waka shu (A Collection of Japanese Poems from Ancient and Modern Times)